Mira Nair

Mira Nair (born October 15, 1957) is a New York-based Indian film director. She was born in India and attended Delhi University and Harvard.

Biography

Mira Nair was born in Bhubaneshwar, Orissa, India, the youngest of three children from a middle-class family. Her father was a civil servant and her mother a social worker. She did her schooling in Bhubaneswar and Simla. She studied sociology in Delhi University. Here, she became involved in political street theater and performed for three years in an amateur drama company. She left for the US at age 19 with a scholarship at Harvard.

Related Topics:
Bhubaneshwar - Orissa - India - Simla - Delhi University

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At the beginning of her career as a film artist she directed four documentaries. "India Cabaret", about the lives of strippers in a Bombay nightclub, won the award at the American Film Festival in 1986.

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Her last master work Monsoon Wedding, a film about a chaotic Punjabi Indian wedding, was awarded the prestigious Golden Lion award at the Venice film festival.

Related Topics:
Punjab - Golden Lion award - Venice film festival

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She currently teaches at Columbia University in New York and is currently married to the famous academic Mahmoud Mamdani. Her latest project is Maisha, a film lab to help East Africans and South Asians learn to make films, headquartered in her adopted home of Kampala, Uganda.

Related Topics:
Columbia University - Mahmoud Mamdani - Kampala - Uganda

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